Don't Cry Wolf
by Triptych
Summary: As the Word of Blake Jihad begins, the legendary merc commander Jaime Wolf's past catches up with him as he faces his final destiny. A crossover of Classic BattleTech and MechWarrior: Dark Age-COMPLETE!
1. 1

**Don't Cry Wolf**

**By Triptych**

_It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it._

-Robert E. Lee (1807 - 1870)

Unlike the dreams of other boys, his subconscious fantasies were always grounded in reality. Where the other lads would imagine vistas of flying through the air on ethereal winds, he would be crawling on the ground, the sharp gravel piercing through his skinny knees and elbows, drawing crimson drops of blood. While his classmates would picture themselves standing triumphantly on top of the carcasses of slain fantastic beasts while reveling in honor and glory, he would visualize himself standing over the grave of his loved ones, sobbing as his tears would become one with the soft pitter-patter of the raindrops in his own cold, dreary world.

Despite being only eight years old, Duncan McGavin had already experienced several lifetimes of pain and loss. His older brother and sister had both met with tragic fates just a few months back and his parents had died many years before, he had never even known his father while his mother succumbed from complications arising from his own birth. People who remarked on his surname knew him to be the last surviving grandson of the legendary Lloyd McGavin, the founder of the Draconis Combine's elite Nightstalker Regiments. It was this factor that enabled him to get a scholarship at the Wolf's Dragoons Mercenary Training School on the independent world of Outreach. From the outset, Duncan had been the star pupil of his class, excelling in both MechWarrior training and leadership courses. With abilities that no boy even ten years older than him could match, Duncan was immediately put in the honors class and a rapid rise along the cadet hierarchy was highly conceivable at this point.

But when the dreams would come at him every night, he would be himself again- just a scared little boy, all alone in the darkness.

As the images of pain and despair threatened to overwhelm his fragile little body, Duncan gasped as he sat upright from the bed, beads of sweat running down from his forehead to his bare chest. As he mentally collected his thoughts while realizing it was just another nightmare, Duncan noticed that his hands clutched at his thermal blanket so forcefully that it hurt. As he threw the comforter over to one side, Duncan slipped out from the bed, his little toes touching the cold floor of the bedroom. Running his hand along his tousled blond hair as he wiped the remaining sweat off his brow, Duncan tiptoed over to where the window was. His roommate was still asleep and he didn't want to disturb him.

The little boy looked out into the cold winter night. Outreach was a temperate world; most planets across the Inner-Sphere still went by the ancient seasonal times of Terra, the birthplace of humanity. It was the month of December and while snow didn't fall on the main continent of Romulus, the bitterly cold wind from the north had come earlier than usual.

Duncan sighed. Although the school was going to adjourn for the winter holidays, he would stay behind while his classmates would rejoin their families all across the Inner-Sphere. Already most of the school's younger cadets had started their winter leave just last week and the rest would follow in the next few days. His roommate had offered him to be a guest when he went on his holidays but Duncan declined, he preferred to be alone this time. Maybe the two weeks of solitude would do him some good, the boy thought. As he looked out and saw the nearby buildings in the downtown area of Harlech, the main city, he noticed some twinkling lights and BattleMechs that moved along the main thoroughfares. Squinting his sleepy eyes for a closer look, Duncan had a suspicion that something wasn't right.

He felt the pressure wave a split second before it hurled him across the room and sent him sprawling to the floor near the base of his bed. The glassteel window was designed to withstand shocks like these as it shattered but did not break into little pieces as it retained its position on the wall. The explosion was akin to a large thump as Duncan's ears kept ringing a hollow tone for a few seconds before returning him to the ambient noises of shouting, screaming and a number of secondary explosions that seemed to be everywhere. A fire alarm sounded distantly out in the hall of the school dormitories.

Duncan's roommate, a curly-haired kid nine years of age named Tommy Tetsuhara instantly sat up from his own bed. "What the heck is going on?" He exclaimed.

"I don't know!" Duncan said as he stood up. "I was staring out the window and then everything exploded!"

Tommy instantly leapt out of his bed and stared at the shattered window. Although a year older than Duncan, Tommy was always loyal to him, standing by the younger boy no matter what had happened. When news of the recent death of his older brother began to spread among his classmates, Tommy decided to stay the night in another room, giving Duncan some time alone. When the older boys tried to pick on Duncan because he was smaller and thinner than most boys his age, it was always Tommy who would spring to his defense. Although Tommy was only achieving average test scores in mathematics and languages, Duncan would spend several hours every night tutoring his older roommate; it was his way of thanking Tommy for his friendship.

"So what do we do?" Tommy asked as the sounds of explosions and weapons fire began to get closer.

Duncan thought for a second. Although all the cadets were drilled when it came to a fire inside the boarding school, this looked like an ongoing attack against the Dragoons themselves. "Well, I think the first thing we should do is put some clothes on just in case we gotta leave." Duncan said as he began to open up the drawers underneath his bed.

"Good idea."

Just as both boys managed to put on their black and red cadet jumpsuits and shoes, a loud knock banged on their door. As Tommy opened it, they instantly saw the face of Jamal, one of the older cadets. Jamal was a tall, strapping twelve-year old of Azami descent who had been chosen to be one of the cadet leaders of the school by dint of his maturity and responsibility; he had also served as an off-duty mentor for Duncan numerous times, giving the younger boy some advice on advanced maneuvers on the 'Mech simulators. Duncan almost immediately remembered that Jamal had the responsibility of fire watch this evening.

"Come on," Jamal shouted as the fire alarm continued to whine out in the corridor. "I need your help!"

As all three boys went out into the hallway, they could see that several other boys had come out of their own rooms, half-dressed and looking dazed with confusion and fear as explosions shook the building.

"What do you want us to do?" Duncan asked the older boy as a few of the younger ones began to cry.

Jamal had to shout to be heard as Tommy tried to calm a few of the others. "You know the drill, I need you two to get all the boys in this section to go down to the underground evacuation area and wait till an adult instructor comes."

"You got it," Duncan smiled despite the stress. "Come on, Tommy!"

As the two started to assemble the younger boys into lines, cracks began to appear on the hallway ceiling, as it was obvious that the attackers were actually targeting the dormitory building itself. Several of the younger boys began to shriek as Duncan started to lead them calmly towards the stairwell leading down to the basement while Tommy brought up the rear and pushed along those boys that were too scared to move. Jamal started running the other way, checking to see if there were others within the building.

Within a few minutes, Duncan made it to the base of the basement stairwell as he opened a yellow-checkered, reinforced door near the edge of the underground room marked EVACUATION TUNNEL. Standing aside, Duncan kept the door open as the troop of younger boys began hurriedly filing in past him. Just as the last boy in line went in, Duncan was immediately knocked off his feet by an explosion that seemed to be too close. As he got up after experiencing a momentary bout of confusion because of the shockwave, he instantly noticed that the stairs above had collapsed and a crying six year-old boy was hanging on the top edge as Tommy held on to him from above.

"Tommy!" Duncan shouted as he ran until he was right underneath them. He could see Tommy's strained face as his roommate hung onto the boy with one hand while locking his free arm along the twisted metal of what was left of the stairwell. The lad was suspended almost five meters off the ground; if Tommy lost his grip or let go, the six year-old would have a very hard fall.

"I can't hold him…" Tommy's voice was overwrought with pain.

"Hang on, Tommy!" Duncan screamed as he desperately searched for a solution. Looking around, he instantly saw a stack of unused air mattresses, the dorm basement also served as a storeroom. With no time to lose, Duncan began to move the pile until it was directly underneath the hanging little boy. As he got up right on top of the pile of bedding, Duncan could almost touch the hanging child's feet if he jumped up. "Okay, Tommy. Let him go, I'll catch him." Duncan said breathlessly as he held up his arms to catch the hysterical little boy.

Just as Tommy let the toddler go, a loud explosion rocked the building and collapsed the remaining stairwell. As the six-year old child fell into Duncan's arms and both flopped onto the pile of cushions, the remaining upper supports collapsed, throwing Tommy headfirst onto the concrete basement floor a few meters away.

"Tommy!" Duncan screamed as he pushed the crying child aside and ran over to where his friend was. Tommy's eyes were open as blood trickled from his nose and mouth. As Duncan tried to feel a pulse on the limp wrist, he noticed that the heart made a few more ticks and then stopped as his friend's bony chest heaved one more time and then became still.

"Oh, Tommy." Duncan sobbed as he held onto his friend as long as he could.


	2. 2

Commander Jaime Wolf winced as a nearby explosion rattled the ceiling and windows of his office near downtown Harlech. The disturbance started early evening when protesters from Temptown, the rough and tumble quarter of the city, began to riot. As military police forces were deployed onto the scene, they were immediately attacked and overwhelmed by what seemed to be highly organized groups of renegade mercenaries with BattleMech and VTOL gunship support. How they got this heavy military hardware onto the planet, Wolf had no clue; the Dragoons had control over anything that came within orbit of Outreach, they even had a small WarShip fleet that could repel all but the most powerful naval battlegroups sent against them. But it was imperative that they needed to find out; most of the three Dragoon line regiments were undergoing periodic refits and were in the middle of training exercises in Outreach's other continent, Remus. Other than his honor guard of four BattleMechs and a few Home Guard units, the Dragoons had virtually no heavy weapons on the entire continent of Romulus. Wolf scratched his head in disbelief; the enemy's timing was perfect, almost too perfect.

A loud beep on his desktop communications link was what he waited for. "Come in." Wolf acknowledged as he leaned over to watch the vid screen.

The oval face of Major Michi Noketsuna, the commander of the Dragoon's intelligence group, Wolfnet, soon appeared on Wolf's vidscreen. Judging from the surroundings behind her, it was obvious that she was calling from the Dragoon's command center in the other continent, Remus. "Commander Wolf, thank the founders you are alive."

"It appears they caught me while I was doing some last minute administration work in my office." Wolf said as he sat down on his chair. "Where is General Maeve Wolf?"

"I am afraid we have some bad news, sir. General Maeve Wolf was being transported towards Remus when there was an apparent explosion in her VTOL transport as it crossed the Argosyan Sea. The helicopter went down and her escorts are now scouring the area for survivors but not finding any so far."

Jaime Wolf bit his lip. General Maeve Wolf was to be his successor for the leadership of the Dragoons. She reminded him so much of the Black Widow, Natasha Kerensky, one of the greatest MechWarriors of all time. He was getting old and he needed to pass on the reigns to someone younger, but with Maeve missing and presumed killed, he now faced a very pressing dilemma. "When are you bringing in reinforcements to Harlech? We only have a few units of the Home Guard left and the enemy is rampaging through the city as we speak."

"The DropShips are lifting off now, Commander. We will have a battalion of 'Mechs to reinforce you in less than an hour, once they get to high orbit, then-" All of a sudden, Wolf could see that there was a commotion in the command center of Remus as shouting could be heard in the background. Noketsuna looked around as an aide slipped a note to her. As she read it, her face paled.

"Major, what is it?"

"Commander, we have just received a report from Fleet Colonel Chandra. Aerospace Command has just detected a large battlegroup of JumpShips and WarShips near a pirate point off Outreach. They began to engage them just a few minutes ago but as of now, we are unable to establish contact with our forces."

"What?" Wolf was aghast. "Have they identified what units are attacking us?"

Noketsuna's face was ashen as she tried to stay calm even as pandemonium raged in the background, Wolf noticed. "We were able to download a few images of the enemy WarShips from our unit's initial burst transmission, Commander. They seem to be painted white and have a downward-pointed broadsword as an insignia."

"Word of Blake?" Wolf gasped.

"It looks like a near-certainty, sir. We need…" Without warning, the communications link abruptly cut off as an error message came up on the vidscreen.

Wolf tried to readjust the settings and attempted to resume the uplink again but there was no reply to his calls. As his hands shook in frustration, the personal communicator unit in his pocket began to beep. As he pulled it out, he immediately activated it. "This is Commander Wolf."

A strange, unfamiliar voice spoke, one full of malice and rage. "Have you ever cried wolf?"

"Who is this?" Wolf said. The commander of the Dragoons was now experiencing a mixture of confusion and dread. Everything seemed to be happening too fast, he didn't even have time to marshal his thoughts in order to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation.

"A ghost from the past." The voice said before cutting off the line.

Wolf sat back in his chair, stunned. As he sat numbly in the darkness of the deserted office, a loud explosion nearby startled him back into lucidity as he activated the scrambler on his personal communicator and dialed in another number.

Almost immediately, he got a reply from the CO of his honor guard, Captain Brian Cameron. "This is Captain Cameron, Commander, reading you loud and clear." Cameron was currently commanding a lance of four 'Mechs just outside of the office building where he was.

"I have lost touch with Central Command in Remus." Wolf decided that his first priority was to reestablish communications with his headquarters, he could find out about that mysterious caller later. "Can you open up an uplink using your BattleMech?"

"Negative, sir." Cameron replied. "I can only establish local comm. links with some of our Home Guard units here in Harlech. I'm getting nothing but static everywhere else."

All of a sudden, the room that Wolf was in became illuminated in a soft white light that seemed to be everywhere. The intense radiance lasted but for a brief second and then a powerful shockwave sounded from the sky, as if the hammer of the gods were threatening to rip the very horizon asunder, in a divine attempt to force a new day onto the planet. For a brief moment, his communicator lost its signal and went static before reestablishing the link to his honor guard commander a few minutes later.

Jaime Wolf closed his eyes as he could barely breathe; the pain in his chest became almost unbearable as the horror of it all was now realized. The doctors had told him that he should no longer be involved in day-to-day work any more. His health was declining fast and he needed to rest more often than ever before. Yet he never told them about the chest pains he had been experiencing for it would have only convinced them to order him from his position as the supreme leader of an independent power in the Inner-Sphere. He wasn't prepared to do it then, but it looked like he no longer had that choice anymore.

"What in the hell happened?" The voice of Captain Brain Cameron shouted in his communicator's receiver. "What was that?"

Wolf knew what it was. There could have been only one explanation. Nuclear weapons. The enemy was using them. Of all the contingencies he had planned for, he never even realized it. The Dragoons could repel any attempt at conquest, but they were totally unprepared for genocide. At that moment he knew. All was now lost. The only thing he could do now was to pick up some of the pieces and rebuild again. If he did it before, he could do it again. What concerned him, however, was the price that would be paid; for it would be a very high price indeed.

As he spoke again on his communicator, his voice was now calm, almost resigned. "Captain, have you checked in with the Home Guard's CO, Major Lewis?"

"No sir, the Home Guard unit here in Harlech looks very disorganized. I count no more than a few lances as rated combat-effective."

"Listen to me carefully, Captain," Wolf said. "I want you to take command of the Home Guard. Your mission is to secure the dependents and head for safe ground. Abandon the city."

"With all due respect, Commander Wolf, I have sworn an oath to defend you as a bodyguard, if I take command of the Home Guard, that will leave you vulnerable, sir. I cannot do that." Cameron protested.

"Captain, this wasn't a request. I am ordering you to recover and evacuate the dependents. Take Point-Commander Trung and the rest of my Elemental bodyguards with you as well, you're going to need them."

"Commander, I…"

"Godspeed, Captain. You have done your job and done it well." Wolf said calmly. "May we see each other again in happier times."

Before the commander of his bodyguards could reply, Jaime Wolf cut off the communicator as he got up from his chair. He had one last job to do and he needed to do it right. He hoped that the next generation would not make the same mistakes as he did.

On the table beside his desk there was a picture of two adolescent boys in Wolf Clan military attire. On quiet evenings he would sometimes sit and stare at the picture for hours on end. Happy memories of a simpler time, he recalled. Jaime Wolf stared at the picture for a few moments, even as the nearby explosions rattled the glass in the office windows. It was the last image of his past as he turned around and walked out of his office for the last time, gently closing the door behind him.


	3. 3

His mind was racing, even though his soul was drowning in a fathomless sea of despair. He would try to focus himself with the task at hand but then the furies in his essence would undoubtedly return. How he wanted to just lie down and try to sleep his troubles away, but he feared for the ones under his protection more than ever. Feeling that it was his fault that all of this came to pass, he hurried down the underground tunnel.

The concrete corridors were dimly illuminated by small strobes of incandescent yellow light that lined the walls every meter or so. As Jaime Wolf kept running down the tunnel, he tried to concentrate at staring down the subterranean corridor and tried not to look at the smoke colored walls beside him. His fatigue and stress were beginning to play tricks with his mind, as he would sometimes make out the faces of ghosts that were apparently manifesting themselves along the twilight recesses of the tunnel. Was this the price of his command, then? To see the visages of the dead as you ran down a tunnel that could have been mistaken as the glooms of Hades?

His lungs were aching as he heaved every gulp of air into his tired body. There were times that his eye would wander away from staring down the corridor and would instead focus on a grayish stain along the walls. It was then that his mind would imagine the faces of those that had died under his command. His own brother, his best friend, his confidant, his son; their cold gray faces would stare back at him as he passed them by, their distant eyes betraying nothing, like some monochrome mural that surrounded him, watching and judging to see if he was worthy enough to join them.

Sometimes, a muffled explosion from the surface would jolt him out of his thoughts, as reality would merge with his inner prescience; Wolf would occasionally stop and check the map in his noteputer as he would halt at an intersection. After checking where the cadet's escape routes would be, he would then change direction and hurry, down another branch of the tunnels. There were times when a passageway that he was suppose to travel into was blocked by debris after its ceiling collapsed; he would then have to backtrack and go down an alternate route. Although it took time, Wolf was obligated and saw no reason to turn back as he kept on moving into the breach while trying to come to terms with the ever deepening abyss in his soul.

As Wolf rounded a corner and ran into another tunnel that looked identical to the one he went into before, he heard a muffled whimper coming from an intersection up ahead. The throat that produced the cry could have only come from a child, Wolf thought as he immediately started running towards it. Just as he got to the dimly lit intersection, he saw that there were about two dozen of them, huddled together near the base of the tunnel walls. Judging from their uniforms, these were the missing cadets from the Dragoons Mercenary Training School that were unaccounted for during the initial attack. Most looked to be between six and seven years old with the exception of one child who seemed to be slightly older. Wolf immediately sensed he knew the kid; the boy had whitish blond hair and was slightly built. It had to have been Duncan McGavin; he had been briefed on the boy's phenomenal test scores in MechWarrior training and had ordered a more thorough scrutiny in regards to observation.

"Children, what are you doing here?" Wolf said as he stopped and caught his breath. "You need to head to the evacuation center quickly."

The boys looked up at him with nervous glances while Duncan, who was about to say something, instead turned his head towards the twilit tunnel to his right as if to indicate a warning. Wolf's apparent relief in finding the children immediately turned to alarm as he pulled out his auto pistol and whirled to face his right flank.

But he was too late. The first clump of flechettes ripped into his right side and made him drop the pistol. As Wolf cried out in pain, the second burst of polymer shards penetrated his right collarbone and sent him falling backwards to the ground. The agony was intense as the pain was both sharp and searing; Wolf felt like his very soul was on fire. As he tried to grope for his fallen pistol, a third clump of needles tore into his right hand, crucifying it into the concrete flooring. Almost immediately the pain along his body was compounded by his heart; Wolf felt the scene tightening around him as his breath seemed to come in shallow gasps; no matter how hard he tried to suck in the air, it felt like an elephant standing on top of him, squeezing the life from his lungs. As Wolf continued to wheeze while his face remained on ground level, he noticed a pair of boots coming out of the darkness, walking towards him until the metal toe guards stood only inches from his face.

He could hear the muffled sobbing of the children as a grizzled hand reached down to the ground near him and picked up his pistol. The boots then shifted sideways as the assailant walked a few paces back while pocketing the gun with his free hand and then turned to face him again. Even as he was blacking out, Wolf could smell the tanned leather from the boots and noticed the shiny silver spurs at the ankles, clinking like tiny bells as the assailant moved.

"Well, well, well. Lookie here. I got separated from my men so I took a trip down these evacuation tunnels and what do I find? Today must be the luckiest day of my life." A voice, no doubt coming from the man wearing the boots called out to him. "Don't die on me yet, Wolf. I got a hankerin' to talk to you, before you get to the great blue 'yonder."

Wolf blinked in between flashes of pain and shortness of breath. As he tried desperately to marshal the remaining willpower in his mortally wounded body, Wolf realized that the voice was indeed familiar to him. He had heard it only less than an hour ago, when he received an anonymous call on his personal communicator. It had finally registered in him just how and why the mercenaries from Temptown were now sacking the city. If only he had realized just how acute the danger was and now he felt doubly shamed that he let it go this far. The fault in the end was his, and his alone.

"Get up and face me, Wolf. I know you can still do it. Fer ol' times sake." Once again the drawling voice taunted him.

With supreme effort, Wolf forced himself to sit up, propping his shoulder along the concrete base of the tunnel wall. As his tired old eyes tried to focus ahead of him, he finally knew who it was. Only one man could have had so much hate against him that even time itself could not bury, at least, not yet.

Colonel Wayne Waco made a toothy grin as he tipped his trademark ten-gallon hat to Jaime Wolf in a mock salute with his left hand while pointing the needler with his right. Waco was practically the same age as he was but Wolf could see a fire in the other man's eyes. Past the graying beard and the stooped shoulders, he and Waco could have passed off as old friends; but Wolf knew, the opposite was true: he was the most ancient of enemies, and he had come to collect what was due.

"You got anythin' to say, Wolf?" Waco continued to taunt as he casually kept the weapon pointed at him. "Them flechettes are tipped with a slow actin' poison, Wolf. Yer as good as dead but I just wanted you to know who it was that did this to you and yer damned Dragoons before you die."

"Why?" Jaime Wolf whispered as the pain prevented him from articulating.

"Why? You got a lotta nerve to even ask me that!" Waco flew into a rage, as it seemed like the veins on his forehead was about to pop out. "You know why. I did this for my son, John. You remember the New Aragon campaign in 3008, don't you? Almost sixty years to the day when your Dragoons ganged up on my son and tore his BattleMech apart. Even then your boys didn't stop, it was said that my son was crushed by one of your 'Mechs." Even in his wounded state, Wolf could feel the seething anger in Waco's voice.

"Not… confirmed." Wolf said softly.

"Say what you want, Wolf." Waco said with finality. "I swore an oath to destroy the Dragoons and now I have come to fulfill that promise. You don't know how long it took to plan this did you? It took years boy, years. The moment I set up shop in Temptown I recalled everyone who had ever served under my unit; like me, they all swore that death oath and I compelled them to complete their ends of the bargain. I had my boys smuggle in 'Mechs part by part; took us years to assemble a large enough force to overrun the city garrison in order to get at the weapons and 'Mechs you had under quarantine." It seemed that Waco was enjoying himself as he relished over the painstaking preparations. "Hell, the plan wouldn't have even worked because there was just so many of you and your fleet of WarShips too. But then the Blakists approached us with an offer that we just couldn't refuse- heck, it was an offer that we just had to take."

Wolf cringed as he realized the final piece of the puzzle. "Word… of Blake?"

"That's right, Wolf." Despite the sobbing children, despite the growing pool of blood on the concrete floor, Waco still grinned as he felt an exhilaration that he never even dreamt of. "When the Star League disbanded just last month, the Blakists felt that the entire Inner-Sphere needed to be cleansed and guess what? You and yer Dragoons are the first on that hit list. You won't be the last, but to me, you're what counts."

"I-if you want me… take me." Wolf said. "Please… spare the children."

"I already have you, Wolf." Waco said as he inched closer to the Dragoons' wounded leader. "As fer these kids, heck, I actually want to kill them all in front of you, just to spite you. These boys are gonna grow up to be Dragoons someday and I can't have that; I wanna wipe you all out. But I wanted you to know who it was that finally beat yer Dragoons before I send you to hell."

"Y-you're so… full… of hate. It… consumes you."

The words made Waco pause for a moment, as if someone had told him the truth about his own soul. When he spoke again, the spite seemed to have subsided just a little bit. "Just this once, I agree with you, Wolf. Fer years I would lie awake at night, thinking what to do if I ever got the chance to kill you and your Dragoons. Every minute of every day you were always on my mind, yer unit twisted my heart and burned my soul. Now here we are, you lying there, helpless like a fly on a spider's web. I haven't felt like this, well, since I said 'good luck' to my son just before that last battle."

Wolf's eyes had become bloodshot from the internal bleeding, but he hoped that Duncan would get the message. "What will you do then… after I'm dead?" He asked.

Waco stood still as he seemed to be momentarily lost in thought for a moment. He had never expected to be able to taunt his old enemy like this, to be so much in control that now he seemed to be at a loss for words as he tried to search for a meaning in his life other than vengeance. "To tell you the truth, Wolf, I really don't know. Maybe I'll try to live again. I gotta admit that I ain't got no other aim in life other than to see you and yer men die a thousand deaths fer what you did. But that thought is fer another time."

As Waco was philosophizing, Duncan continued to creep closer behind the hateful old man. The boy knew that he had only one chance at this and he couldn't let the other kids down, there was too much at stake. He had realized that Commander Wolf was buying time while talking to the other man and he needed to act now.

"But enough of this." Waco said as he aimed the needler at Wolf's face. "Now that I told you everything, it's time fer you to die. We may meet each other again in the afterlife, Wolf, but I just wanted you to know who it is that finally beat you, not the Clans, not the Great Houses, just an old man who did it fer the memory of his son. Bye, Wolf." With those words, Waco began to squeeze the weapon's trigger.

"No!" Duncan screamed as he leapt at Wayne Waco's ankles, driving into the standing old man whose legs crumpled almost immediately. Waco made an ear-piercing scream as the boy's plunging attack broke his left ankle and he inadvertently dropped the needler onto the pavement. As Duncan and Waco tumbled onto the ground, Wolf made a supreme effort of will as he crawled towards the fallen needler.

"You little punk!" Waco cursed as he shoved the boy away from him and began pulling out Wolf's auto pistol from his jacket. Duncan tried to wrestle the gun away from Wayne Waco but the old man slammed his other fist into the boy's temple, flinging Duncan into the wall, dazed and in pain.

Wolf could barely see now, the agony and the pressure on his heart narrowed his vision to only what was in front of him, he was seeing double and there was nothing but blackness in his peripheral sight. But still, his indomitable will kept him going as he focused on the one, all-important task ahead while continuing his relentless crawl for the needler. Wolf subconsciously winced as he almost felt the slugs from his own pistol smashing into his side but he knew that he had nothing to lose anymore, so he kept on crawling towards the weapon.

Waco roared with both anger and pain as he finally pulled out the auto pistol from his jacket. Flicking off the safety, he tried to aim for Wolf's head and started to squeeze the trigger just as the other man grasped the needler with his left hand and aimed it at him.

Both fired simultaneously. Waco's shot went slightly wide, slamming into Wolf's ribcage and separated into several solid pieces that punctured his lungs and tore up his arteries. The clump of flechettes from the needler on the other hand, found its mark as the razor-thin needles tore into Waco's throat, tearing out his jugular vein and eviscerating his windpipe. Wayne Waco gurgled what seemed to be a bloody curse as he twitched on the ground, both his breath and blood gushing out from his body. Within a few moments, he lay still.

Fighting back the pain from his bruised cheek, Duncan got up and ran over to Jaime Wolf. He could see that the supreme leader of the Dragoons was literally torn up in pieces; pools of blood had stained the gray, concrete pavement where he lay as his wounds continued to bleed. "Mr. Wolf, we got to get help for you. Have you got a communicator?" The boy pleaded.

Wolf's voice was barely a whisper now that the boy had to kneel down in order to hear him. "What happened to Waco?"

"H-he's dead, sir. You got him." Duncan answered as he cradled Wolf's head in his arms, tears running down his cheeks.

"My communicator… is useless underground. No signal." Wolf made a bloody smile. It seemed that most of the pain had now subsided; all he could feel was a dull ache and maybe that wasn't so bad, at least it was a sign that he was still alive.

The other children formed a standing circle around them as Duncan tried to comfort him. "But there must be something we could do for you!" The boy begged.

"You… did well. Saved the others. Now get going." Wolf whispered. "Duncan, tell Tasha… that I will give her regards to my brother when I see him."

"Mr. Wolf," Duncan sobbed, "I can't leave you like this."

"I… order you… Bring the children to safety. Leave me… I want to be alone." Wolf closed his eyes.

"Goodbye, Mr. Wolf." Duncan whispered to the old man's ear as he lowered his head gently on the ground. "The Dragoons will never die, we will go on. Take care."

Gathering the other children, Duncan started to lead them away. Wolf heard their footsteps as they continued on into an adjoining tunnel and the sounds of their little feet finally subsided. He could still hear the occasional thump of an explosion from above as the battle for the city raged but even then, there was now a certain calmness that seemed peaceful to him. As he looked around one more time, he saw the faces of the dead along the walls once more, but their expressions were different now, some were smiling; it was almost as if they were now willing to welcome him to their fold. He had finally earned their respect.

His last thoughts were almost a dream, as he woke up and realized that he was a teenaged boy again, standing across the steppes of Strana Mechty, gazing out into the vast wildness and as he looked on, he could see a pack of wolves racing across the plains, their brown and gray furs shimmering in the sun, what a magnificent sight they were.

Another boy, slightly younger than him, came bounding over on the other side of the hillock where he was standing. "Jaime, the wolves are hunting, let us go see them!" The other boy shouted as he waved over to him.

"Coming, Joshua!" He replied.

The two boys then ran as one, their young bodies became shining beacons of light as they laughed, dashing over the veldt, their smiles and hilarity ever increasing, never wavering. It was a bright and glorious day, and they were going to do their best to enjoy it.


End file.
